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Can Europe train a frontier AI model on the compute it owns?

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Re: Can Europe train a frontier AI model on the compute it owns?

#91

Post by vidarh »

oliver236 wrote: post #20
morkalork wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a weird sense, the EU exemplifies what the USA would be like without a strong federal government: Dysfunctional as states compete with, undercut and stifle each other.

isnt the eu basically a less federalist version of the usa? how is it then that the usa claims its more free? the individual state members in the EU have more freedom than individual states. someone explain this to me please

Sort of, if you squint right.

The EU is in some ways closer to a confederation, but with various "hacks" - in the form of various treaties - to try to work around the problems that led the US to abandon it in favour of a federal model.

It's largely down to very different levels of willingness to integrate more, and various levels of opposition to the kind of constitutional changes that would be required for a federal model.

Re: Can Europe train a frontier AI model on the compute it owns?

#92

Post by thomascountz »

Does Europe need to train a frontier AI model, at all?

"Training a frontier AI model" is a euphemism. The AI industry is, at present, a disproportionately resource-intensive and exploitative activity which carries only an religious promise of making up for itself at some future date (note that the beliefs being touted to board members are different than the gospel spread to users).

More accessible "non-frontier" models are being designed, built, and trained, while bigger models' gains are beginning to asymptote. Economically, Europe does not often hastily participate in new ways of wealth extraction, and with regard to sovereignty, I'd argue that "frontier" models are becoming a liability to the governments who build them and to the populations they're meant to lead.

Re: Can Europe train a frontier AI model on the compute it owns?

#93

Post by cyanydeez »

thomascountz wrote: post #92

Does Europe need to train a frontier AI model, at all ? "Training a frontier AI model" is a euphemism. The AI industry is, at present, a disproportionately resource-intensive and exploitative activity which carries only an religious promise of making up for itself at some future date (note that the beliefs being touted to board members are different than the gospel spread to users). More accessible "non-frontier" mod…

it is a bizarre nuclear arms race. what they do need are the raw reaources and the capabilities to sefend themselves ans the capability for offense atleast as a threat.

Re: Can Europe train a frontier AI model on the compute it owns?

#94

Post by mnewme »

beernet wrote: post #31

Absolutely not, even if Europe was given all of the compute in the world. The issues are much much worse. Starting at "data privacy", continuing with the "EU AI Act" and just an overall mindset of regulation and German angst. Many structures in the EU actively prevent and fight against innovation. Oftentimes more subtle but the consequences stay the same. If you ever had to use one of the "sovereign" AI provides such…

Bullshit. The AI Act is not the problem, Mistral models are definitely usable and some were/are competitive.

European future looks bright compared to the political landscape the US has now

Re: Can Europe train a frontier AI model on the compute it owns?

#95

Post by [deleted] »

retinaros wrote: post #89
rootlocus wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can debate the details and implementation but EU legislature is, at least in spirit, trying to protect human rights. What does it say about progress that the same laws that protect human rights also stifle innovation?

no its not. its about mass surveillance and mass population control. regulating, watching, punishing and jailing the taxpayers while letting millions of people enter illegally and destroy the society from both sides. europe is huxley nightmarish utopia worst parts without any of the bright ones.

[deleted]

Re: Can Europe train a frontier AI model on the compute it owns?

#96

Post by thomascountz »

cyanydeez wrote: post #93
thomascountz wrote: post #92

Does Europe need to train a frontier AI model, at all ? "Training a frontier AI model" is a euphemism. The AI industry is, at present, a disproportionately resource-intensive and exploitative activity which carries only an religious promise of making up for itself at some future date (note that the beliefs being touted to board members are different than the gospel spread to users). More accessible "non-frontier" mod…

it is a bizarre nuclear arms race. what they do need are the raw reaources and the capabilities to sefend themselves ans the capability for offense atleast as a threat.

I'm not sure I follow how this metaphor plays out. Many stand to gain by harming and threatening Europe and many stand to suffer if Europe is harmed or threatened. Far be it from me to claim Europe a perfected system, but there are globalized interdependencies which exist here. I think that I'm not seeing the indicators of hard benefits which correlate to the hypotheses put forward by the financial markets. In which ways are the trillions of dollars of value meant to manifest and how do we know when they begin to do so?

Re: Can Europe train a frontier AI model on the compute it owns?

#97

Post by jandrewrogers »

tremon wrote: post #80
jandrewrogers wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US, the freedom is explicitly for the people, not Federal nor State government. States are relatively more free than the Federal government, but both are greatly restricted by the Constitution. Before the Constitution, the US had a previous government under the Articles of Confederation (see below) that had many deficiencies and only gave freedom to member States. The EU is organized more similar to the US und…

> In the US, the freedom is explicitly for the people, not Federal nor State government. I don't see how anyone can make this claim in 2026 and not expect to be laughed out of the room? In practice, freedom is for sale; it's not available to the people nor the citizens.

This is irrelevant to the subject at hand. Not everything needs to be about whatever outrage bait is the current thing on your social media feed.

Re: Can Europe train a frontier AI model on the compute it owns?

#98

Post by mnewme »

nradov wrote: post #72
rootlocus wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can debate the details and implementation but EU legislature is, at least in spirit, trying to protect human rights. What does it say about progress that the same laws that protect human rights also stifle innovation?

And yet the EU legislature seems to be actively hostile to some human rights, such as the right to free expression and the right to keep and bear arms. How do you account for that discrepancy?

European countries have higher freedom of press than the US. Bearing arms is not a human right in Europe, different culture.

Europe has more human rights protections than the US and stronger enforcement of them, even against the state, by many metrics. Freedom of expression ends where other human rights begin, is protecting hate speech and Holocaust denial really something worthwhile?

Re: Can Europe train a frontier AI model on the compute it owns?

#99

Post by SyneRyder »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #81
SyneRyder wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've tried using Mistral for various tasks, and it is so far behind the American models that I just never bother using it despite still having lots of Mistral API credits leftover. Even their OCR and TTS products are surpassed by generic US models - I use regular Claude Sonnet for OCR because it is more accurate than Mistral OCR. I could rant about this, I am just so disappointed at how Mistral completely gave up and…

Did Mistral really throw in the towel on building frontier models?

Well, the front page of their website claims "Frontier AI In Your Hands", so I guess they're not marketing it that way.

I personally think there's a hint in that Mistral Medium 3.5 costs 5x the price of Mistral Large 3, and that Mistral Large is not listed anymore as a "Featured Model" and hasn't been updated since Dec 2025:

https://docs.mistral.ai/models/overview

But what I really base it on is an interview the Mistral CEO gave on the Big Technology Podcast back in January this year:

Alex Kantrowitz: "Do you consider yourself, is the most important thing you do building the models? Or is the most important thing you do the service? Are you primarily a model builder, or primarily a service provider?"

Arthur Mensch: "We are there to help our customers get to value."

Alex Kantrowitz: "So, service!"

Arthur Mensch: "We are here to... but to get to value, they need to have great models. And to get to value, they need to have the right tools to train the models. And so the best way to train, to create those tools, is effectively to train the best models. So the two things are extremely linked together. We create models that are very easy to customize. We create models with tools that we then export to our customers, so that they can use them, and we help our customers train their own models. You can't go and sell to an enterprise that you are going to help them create great custom systems, if you can't show to the world that you are effectively the leader in open source technology. So the two parts are equally important, the first is enabling the other, and there's effectively a flywheel there because we make our choices when it comes to the model design in a way that is enabling the various customers we have. As one example, we've put a lot of emphasis on having models that are great at physics, because we work with manufacturing companies that run into physical problems. So that's the flywheel we have set up. Having the science team and the business team sit together."

It's at 22:37 in the video. Elsewhere in the podcast he mentions that they don't believe in a large unified generic model, they think the future of AI is small dedicated-task models (OCR, TTS, bespoke trained)... but unfortunately I don't have a timestamp link for that part.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxUTdyEDpbU&t=1357s

Re: Can Europe train a frontier AI model on the compute it owns?

#100

Post by Yeask »

pptr wrote: post #74
LastTrain wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. I wonder if being at the forefront of AI makes for a better & more free society.

You can only make money if you produce value. If you stop producing value because your old industries decline/collapse and you miss out on new industries, your wealth will trend towards that of a third world country.

Italy sells bags made in China for 5k. We know how to produce value.
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